Margaret Atwood called Ernest Buckler “one of the pathbreakers for the modern Canadian novel,” yet he has slipped into relative obscurity. This new book by Marta Dvořák, Ernest Buckler: Rediscovery and Reassessment breaks new ground in Canadian literary studies by analyzing some of Buckler’s works that have remained unknown or unexplored by critics, and by addressing the formalistic innovations of these texts. It allows a general readership to discover — and an international specialized readership to reassess — the wide, even eclectic scope of an author best known for his first novel, The Mountain and the Valley.

Marta Dvořák situates Buckler firmly within his cultural and intellectual environment. She argues the importance of his connections with Emerson and the American transcendental milieu, and demonstrates his links with Romantics such as Schopenhauer and Shelley and modernists like Joyce, Faulkner, and Mansfield, as well as intellectuals from Aristotle to Aquinas. She explores his philosophical vision and his complex, adventurous relationship with language. Extracts from Buckler’s published and unpublished material juxtaposed with those from a wide range of writers (from Henry James to Foucault) offer new illuminating perspectives.

The progressive structure of the book will draw readers in to discussions on shared concerns: the nostalgia for a vanished past, the relationship between family and community, the rural and the urban, or the questioning of, and coming to terms with, ethics and the social fabric of today’s rapidly changing technological horizon in which traditional values are eroding.

Ernest Buckler (1908-1984) was born in West Dalhousie, Nova Scotia. He spent most of his life writing and farming in the Annapolis Valley, and died in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia.

Marta Dvořák is professor of Canadian and postcolonial literatures in English at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, former associate editor of The International Journal of Canadian Studies, and editor of Commonwealth Essays and Studies. Focusing her research on (post)modernism and cross-culturalism, she has authored and edited books ranging from Ernest Buckler: Rediscovery and Reassessment (WLU Press, 2001) to Tropes and Territories: Short Fiction, Postcolonial Readings, and Canadian Writings in Context (co-ed. W.H. New) and The Faces of Carnival in Anita Desai's In Custody.

Marta Dvořák's profile page

''Dvořák...is an adept reader of theory and her application of history, philosophy, and culture to Buckler's intentions and results in his prose represents the engagement of a deeply intelligent mind with material entirely worthy of respect and celebration...She indicates clearly to readers of her book how importan and lasting his effort s with words remain....Dvořák's approach to Buckler is far ahead of its time....With this book Dvořák establishes herself as a major critical voice.''

J.A. Wainwright

''In her conclusion, Dvořák makes an admirable argument for placing Buckler at the 'crossroads' between 'nineteenth-century cultural stances' (Platonic, Renaissance, and Romantic 'phenomenological and ontological concerns') and 'modernist' aesthetic philosophies, even anticipating 'postmodern discursive techniques.'''

University of Toronto Quarterly, 72:1, Winter 2002-3